A Christmas of Hope

My wife and I are enjoying ourselves talking about how this may (hopefully, will) be the last Christmas for many things: the last Christmas I can't go out for a walk with her, the last Christmas that I don't have the excuse of my butt/leg pain to keep me from midnight mass, and so on.  It's an ongoing subject of hopeful speculation and joking for us.

Of course, assuming CCSVI is found and I do get the treatment and it helps, it is still likely that I will have some disabilities to the end of my life... but it's nice to hope.  And finally there is a reason to hope.  You forget how much you've come to accept a diminished future until you find some real chance that it doesn't have to be that way.  Hearing stories of people with MS who had the liberation treatment and are finding significant improvements in their symptoms has given us reason to hope that it could be that way for me, too.  One story (http://www.thisisms.com/ftopic-8942-0.html) is of someone who has been in a wheelchair for the last six months, had the Liberation treatment in Poland this month, and is starting to walk again - and I'm not even in a wheelchair, yet!  Other treated people talk of "two steps forward and one step back" and that is more sobering... but even that is much more hopeful than an unrelenting deterioration.

Merry Christmas, everyone!